{"id":9279,"date":"2019-01-26T19:22:32","date_gmt":"2019-01-27T03:22:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wou.edu\/westernhowl\/?p=9279"},"modified":"2019-01-26T19:33:31","modified_gmt":"2019-01-27T03:33:31","slug":"youtube-channel-girls-play-features-wou-alumnae","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/youtube-channel-girls-play-features-wou-alumnae\/","title":{"rendered":"Youtube channel Girls Play features WOU alumnae"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Girls Play Studio Tour\" width=\"500\" height=\"281\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/7yudBHtyVjs?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><strong>Chrys Weedon<\/strong> | Entertainment Editor<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">According to the 2016 census, Monmouth\u2019s population is about 10,000 people. The Girls Play Youtube channel\u2019s subscriber count currently sits at about 246,000, which is 24 times more people than the population of Monmouth.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Girls Play is a channel that has been building a following for six years. The group also has a considerable following on Twitch, a streaming channel where viewers can interact live with streamers. Many women have joined and left the channel over the years, but the current team is about 10 people. One of the original members, Larson, was working at Target and attending Western when the channel was born.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cOne of my friends realized \u2018hey, there\u2019s no girls in this platform, and especially a group. How cool would it be if we could get a group of girls in this niche that\u2019s starting to grow and see what we could do with it?\u2019\u201d said Larson.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The channel started in a bedroom, and in the beginning it was just a hobby. Larson commented that for the first four years, she was only recreationally making videos while also working and going to school. But as their following grew, it became a full time job. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/files\/2019\/01\/Youtube-683x1024.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"228\" height=\"342\" class=\" wp-image-9281 alignleft\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cI\u2019ve only been full time two-years with this,\u201d Larson commented, \u201cit was very hard. Even though we look big and professional now, it\u2019s still a struggle and I don\u2019t think a lot of people ever realize that the struggle at the beginning is real.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Natalie Doerfler, a junior theater major at Western, joined the channel about a year ago. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cNow people are recognizing Youtube and Twitch as actual jobs and you get paid to do them,\u201d Doerfler said. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Although maintaining the channel takes a lot of work, Natalie enjoys being able to do something she loves. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cIt\u2019s become about just hanging out with friends on a Youtube channel and on Twitch, and just being able to play video games,\u201d commented Doerfler.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The Girls Play channel has videos on a diverse group of video games. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cWe\u2019re\u2026 variety, which was originally why we liked the idea of the girl group,\u201d said Larson, \u201cbecause you have so many different personalities, whereas a lot of channels especially are very solo focused.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Specific challenges come along with being a group of women online in a Youtube genre that is dominated by men.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cThere are gonna be the men who come into chat and talk about how much makeup you\u2019re wearing and how distracting it is,\u201d said Doerfler, \u201cand then you\u2019ll have another guy come into maybe a different stream where you\u2019re wearing a little bit less makeup and they\u2019ll judge you for how little makeup you\u2019re wearing.\u201d But, in the end, the girls say that the community they\u2019ve built is worth everything.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> \u201cWe are completely relying on the community to keep (the channel) going,\u201d Larson said.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Doerfler said the most important thing about the channel to her was to engage with other women within the gaming community. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cI think it\u2019s important to show men that, hey, this is happening and it\u2019s okay for you to enjoy this as well,\u201d said Doerfler. \u201cI just want people to see that women are having fun with video games just as much as men.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><em><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Contact the author at <a href=\"mailto:howlentertainment@wou.edu\">howlentertainment@wou.edu<\/a><\/span><\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Video courtesy of Chrys Weedon<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>Photo courtesy of Paul F. Davis<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Chrys Weedon | Entertainment Editor According to the 2016 census, Monmouth\u2019s population is about 10,000 people. The Girls Play Youtube channel\u2019s subscriber count currently sits at about 246,000, which is 24 times more people than the population of Monmouth. Girls Play is a channel that has been building a following for six years. The group [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1094,"featured_media":9281,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9279","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment"],"modified_by":"The Western Howl","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9279","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1094"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9279"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9279\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9281"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9279"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9279"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wou.edu\/westernhowl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9279"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}